Haven’t many philosophers in the past basically done the same? From Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to the Libertarians and the Ayn Randroids today.
What makes a behavior moral for many is precisely because it is seen by them to be a rational behavior.
Cite some examples from your own life of behaviors you have witnessed [your own or others] that you deemed to be both reasonable and unethical.
Instead, there are any number of circumstantial contexts in which William Barrett’s “rival goods” present themselves. One side cites what they construe to be reasonable arguments for choosing one set of behaviors in reacting to the coronavirus, while another side cites what they construe to be more reasonable arguments. Or the most reasonable arguments of all.
Who then gets to connect the dots between rational and ethical behavior and rational and unethical behavior here? What might some examples be that philosophers and ethicists can all agree on?
From my frame of mind, no God, no vanatage point [philosophical or otherwise] able to pin this down. And, from the vantage point of some, no God, and “the right thing to do” ever and always revolves around what they deem to be in their own best/selfish interest. In fact, I suspect you’ll bump into these folks more and more if the coronavirus pandemic really begins to spin out of control.
For those folks who study the coronavirus, those scientists and medical professionals trying to figure out its origin, what it is capable of, how it infects, how it spreads, what might contain it, how a vaccine can be created to stop it…does rational and irrational thinking come into play for them? Is there a more logical and epistemologically sound manner in which to share their information and knowledge with the world?
Well, suppose philosophers and ethicists had access to the same sort of rational information and knowledge. Suppose they were then able to share that with the world in terms of how people react to the virus, in terms of how the politicians and law makers and government officials ought to create policies that channel human behaviors in their communities so as to be in sync with the most rational possible world.
Scientists and medical professionals have goals and methods for achieving those goals. So do philosophers and ethicists.
Again, we clearly make a different distinction here.
Says who, you? Based on what…your assertion that there is fact an objective morality derived from whatever manner in which you connect the dots between that and God. And thus that stealing per se is necessarily, essentially, inherently a bad thing. Like, say, Communism?
I try to point out that there is more to stealing than rationality and I get this typical knee-jerk reaction of yours.
And I try to point out the parts embedded in an actual instance of stealing that, from my point of view, revolve around dasein, conflicting goods and political power. And here there is definitely more than rationality involved.
There is, in turn, varying degrees of ambiguity, ambivalence, uncertainty, confusion, bewilderment and perplexity. Unless, of course, as an objectivist, all of that is subsumed in one or another intellectual contraption, moral narrative or political agenda.
No, I wish only to point out the dangers embedded in a world in which the moral and political objectivists gain access to power in any particular community and are able to enforce only their own conclusions regarding human behaviors with respect to the coronavirus.
Only their own means and ends count. The right makes might folks.
Only [of course] for some of them this would revolve not only around infectious diseases, but around all other conflicting goods as well. It’s always their way. Period. With respect to, among other things, race and gender and sexual preferences and ethnicity and religion and abortion and gun ownership and the role of government and animal rights.
Then you ought to ask yourself why this bothers you so much.
Huh? Isn’t that basically what you come back to in regard to the Communists? Or what others point to in regard to one or another religious denomination’s rendition of sharia law?
On this thread I’m just curious to explore how close or how far Buddhists come to this when they connect the dots themselves between enlightened behavior here and now and sustaining “I” beyond the grave.